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Tuesday August 27, 2013

  • 239th Day of 2013 / 126 Remaining
  • 26 Days Until The First Day of Autumn

  • Sunrise:6:36
  • Sunset:7:45
  • 13 Hours 9 Minutes of Daylight

  • Moon Rise:11:51pm
  • Moon Set:1:31pm
  • Moon’s Phase: 56 %

  • The Next Full Moon
  • September 19 @ 4:12am
  • Full Corn Moon
  • Full Barley Moon

This full Moon corresponds with the time of harvesting corn. It is also called the Barley Moon, because it is the time to harvest and thresh the ripened barley. The Harvest Moon is the full Moon nearest the autumnal equinox, which can occur in September or October and is bright enough to allow finishing all the harvest chores.

  • Tides
  • High:4:50am/4:09pm
  • Low:10:02am/11:24pm

  • Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
  • Normal To Date:0.00
  • This Year:0.04
  • Last Year:0.02
  • Annual Seasonal Average:23.80

  • Holidays
  • Petroleum Day-Texas
  • Banana Lovers Day
  • National Pots de Creme Day

  • Independence Day-Moldova

  • On This Day In …
  • 1660 --- The books of John Milton were burned in London due to his attacks on King Charles II.

  • 1776 --- During the American Revolution, British forces under General William Howe defeat Patriot forces under General George Washington at the Battle of Brooklyn in New York. On August 22,

    Howe's large army landed on Long Island, hoping to capture New York City and gain control of the Hudson River, a victory that would divide the rebellious colonies in half. On August 27, the Red Coats marched against the Patriot position at Brooklyn Heights, overcoming the Americans at Gowanus Pass and then outflanking the entire Continental Army. Howe failed to follow the advice of his subordinates and storm the redoubts at Brooklyn Heights, and on August 29 General Washington ordered a brilliant retreat to Manhattan by boat, thus saving the Continental Army from capture.

    At the Battle of Brooklyn, the Americans suffered 1,000 casualties to the British loss of only 400 men. On September 15, the British captured New York City.

  • 1789 --- The Declaration of the Rights of Man was adopted by the French National Assembly.

  • 1859 --- A shaft was being sunk deep in the ground and the drill had reached 69 feet, 6 inches. W.A. Smith, better known to the drillers and other folk in the small town in Western Pennsylvania as Uncle Billy, saw a dark film floating on the water. The water was below the derrick floor. Colonel Edwin Drake kept drilling, because what Uncle Billy saw was oil. Soon, the first commercial oil well was pumping out 20 barrels of crude oil a day. Titusville, PA: home of the first oil well.

  • 1883 --- The most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history occurs on Krakatau (also called Krakatoa), a small, uninhabited volcanic island located west of Sumatra in Indonesia, on this day in 1883. Heard 3,000 miles away, the explosions threw five cubic miles of earth 50 miles into the air, created 120-foot tsunamis and killed 36,000 people. Krakatau exhibited its first stirrings in more than 200 years on May 20, 1883. A German warship passing by reported a seven-mile high cloud of ash and dust over Krakatau. For the next two months, similar explosions would be witnessed by commercial liners and natives on nearby Java and Sumatra. With little to no idea of the impending catastrophe, the local inhabitants greeted the volcanic activity with festive excitement. On August 26 and August 27, excitement turned to horror as Krakatau literally blew itself apart, setting off a chain of natural disasters that would be felt around the world for years to come. An enormous blast on the afternoon of August 26 destroyed the northern two-thirds of the island; as it plunged into the Sunda Strait, between the Java Sea and Indian Ocean, the gushing mountain generated a series of pyroclastic flows (fast-moving fluid bodies of molten gas, ash and rock) and monstrous tsunamis that swept over nearby coastlines. Four more eruptions beginning at 5:30 a.m. the following day proved cataclysmic. The explosions could be heard as far as 3,000 miles away, and ash was propelled to a height of 50 miles. Fine dust from the explosion drifted around the earth, causing spectacular sunsets and forming an atmospheric veil that lowered temperatures worldwide by several degrees.

  • 1889 --- Charles G. Conn of Elkhart, IN patented the metal clarinet. More than 100 years later the name, Conn, still represents one of the most popular musical instrument names -- especially for clarinets.

  • 1892 --- The original Metropolitan Opera House in New York was seriously damaged by fire.

  • 1894 --- The Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act was passed by the U.S. Congress. The provision within for a graduated income tax was later struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

  • 1921 --- The owner of Acme Packing Company bought a pro football team for Green Bay, WI. J.E. Clair paid tribute to those who worked in his plant by naming the team the Green Bay Packers.

  • 1938 --- At a poetry reading by Archibald MacLeish, another poet, in a fit of jealousy, set fire to some papers in order to disrupt the recital. That jealous poet, incidentally, was Robert Frost.

  • 1962 --- Mariner 2 was launched by the United States. In December of the same year the spacecraft flew past Venus. It was the first space probe to reach the vicinity of another planet.

  • 1965 --- Elvis Presley played host to the Beatles at his home in Bel-Air, CA.

  • 1965 --- Bob Dylan's second electric album, "Highway 61 Revisited,"

    was released.

  • 1970 --- 'Spill The Wine' by Eric Burdon & War is #1 on the charts

  • 1971 --- Alice Waters' Chaz Panisse restaurant opened in Berkeley

  • 1979 --- Lord Louis Mountbatten is killed when Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorists detonate a 50-pound bomb hidden on his fishing vessel Shadow V. Mountbatten, a war hero, elder statesman, and second cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, was spending the day with his family in Donegal Bay off Ireland's northwest coast when the bomb exploded. Three others were killed in the attack, including Mountbatten's 14-year-old grandson, Nicholas. Later that day, an IRA bombing attack on land killed 18 British paratroopers in County Down, Northern Ireland. The assassination of Mountbatten was the first blow struck against the British royal family by the IRA during its long terrorist campaign to drive the British out of Northern Ireland and unite it with the Republic of Ireland to the south. The attack hardened the hearts of many Brits against the IRA and convinced Margaret Thatcher's government to take a hard-line stance against the terrorist organization. British war hero Lord Louis Mountbatten was killed off the coast of Ireland in a boat explosion; the Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility.

  • 1981 --- Divers probing the wreckage of the luxury cruise ship Andrea Doria recovered two safes from the purser’s office. The Andrea Doria sank in a collision with the Swedish liner Stockholm

    (July 25, 1956). What was in the safes? Oh, only about a million dollars in cash and jewelry.

  • 1982 --- Oakland Athletics outfielder Rickey Henderson steals his 119th base of the year, breaking Hall of Famer Lou Brock’s 1979 record for stolen bases in a season. When his major league career ended in 2003, Henderson was baseball’s all-time leader in stolen bases and lead-off home runs, as well as the all-time leader in bases on balls (walks) with 2,190 (Barry Bonds later broke this record) and the all-time runs leader, with 2,295. Henderson left the majors at age 45 and ended his career playing independent minor league baseball, still getting on base and still scoring runs. In a sport where the point of the offensive player is to score runs, Henderson did it more than anyone in history.

  • 1984 --- President Ronald Reagan announced that the first citizen to go into space would be a teacher. The teacher that was eventually chosen was Christa McAuliffe.

  • 1999 --- The final crew of the Russian space station Mir departed the station to return to Earth. Russia was forced to abandon Mir for financial reasons.

  • 2007 --- Michael Vick, a star quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, formally pleads guilty before a Richmond, Virginia, judge to a federal felony charge related to running a dogfighting ring. That December, the 27-year-old Vick, once the highest-paid player in the NFL, was sentenced to 23 months in federal prison.

  • Birthdays
  • Tuesday Weld
  • Sophia Smith
  • Lyndon Baines Johnson(36th President)
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
  • Sen Bob Kerrey
  • Daryl Dragon
  • Pee Wee Herman-Paul Reubens
  • C S Forester
  • Man Ray
  • Mother Teresa-Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu
  • Martha Raye
  • Mabgosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi
  • Ira Levin
  • Barbara Bach